The pendulum swings: Romney takes 4 point lead over Obama in new Pew poll

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Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s performance in last week’s presidential debate impressed analysts, pundits and apparently some likely voters as he took a 4 percentage point lead over President Obama in a poll released by the Pew Research Center today.

The results reflect a 12 percentage points shift since the previous Pew poll last month. The Pew survey’s margin is the largest edge for Romney in a raft of post-debate polls.

The poll showed 49 percent of likely voters support Romney, up from 43 percent in last month’s Pew poll. According to the same poll, support for Obama dropped from 51 percent to 45 percent.

Conducted between Oct. 4-7, 1,511 adults were polled in the study. A primary cause of the swing toward Romney is attributed to his debate performance, which 66 percent of respondents said was superior to Obama’s. Twenty percent of respondents declared the president the victor.

In terms of leadership, Romney pulled even with Obama, with 44 percent of voters saying each would make a strong leader.

Romney also took a lead in the category of new ideas with 47 percent of voters favoring him compared to 40 for Obama.

Of those poled, a majority said Obama would be more willing to work with the opposite party, is more honest, more moderate, more consistent and better able to connect to the average man.

Romney was deemed to be better for the economy, with more voters siding with him on his ability to reduce the federal budget deficit, improve jobs and deal with taxes. Forty-seven percent of those polled said they agreed with Romney’s view on the role of government compared to 43 percent for Obama.

A majority of respondents still favored Obama on his handling of medicare, health care and foreign policy, but his support numbers dropped by at least 10 percentage points in each of those categories.

The true bellwether of this campaign season — the cluster of swing states that ultimately will decide the election — remained in favor of Obama on all but a few topics: new ideas, reducing the deficit and improving the job situation went in Romney’s favor by at least 10 percentage points.

Dealing with taxes was a wash with each candidate receiving 33 percent support.

This is just one poll, but it indicates a shift in favor of Romney just three weeks after the release of candid footage from a closed fund-raiser threatened to derail his campaign.

The vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan is scheduled to take place on Thursday and the second presidential debate is scheduled for Oct. 16.